Whistling Dixie: The GOP’s ‘culture of poverty’ gambit

Dr. Ron Daniels is President of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and Distinguished Lecturer at York College City University of New York. His articles and essays also appear on the IBW website www.ibw21.org and www.northstarnews.com . To send a message, arrange media interviews or speaking engagements, Dr. Daniels can be reached via email at info@ibw21.org.

(NNPA) – The 2014 mid-term elections are just eight months away – and the Republicans are worried about Black voters again.

They have good reason to be – that is, to worry about a repeat of 2012. Then, despite the best efforts of GOP-dominated state legislatures to block Blacks’ access to the polls, Black voters’ turnout rate surpassed that of Whites for the first time ever. That achievement, along with the substantial turnout of both Hispanic American and Asian American voters, helped underwrite President Obama’s decisive re-election victory.

Equally important, Obama’s name on the ballot was only partially responsible for Blacks’ march to the polls, because the Black vote had been rising markedly since 1996.

So, despite the predictions of some politicos and pundits that the Democrats will lose the Senate in November, the vote of voters of color may once again prove the president’s party’s ace in the hole.

That’s part of the political lens through which to consider the recent comments by Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican chairman of the House of Representative’s budget committee, and Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News talk show host, painting Black Americans as “problem people.” Their purpose was to signal the GOP and conservative echo chamber that it’s time to start whistling “Dixie” anew – but this time replacing the words of longing for the “old times they are not forgotten” with a lament about Blacks’ supposed culture of poverty.

O’Reilly, responding to Obama’s late February announcement of a Black Male Initiative to help young males of color prepare for a productive adulthood, commanded Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to “attack the fundamental disease if you want to cure it … get people like Jay Z, Kanye West, all these gangsta rappers to knock it off.”

DailyBeast.com columnist Jamelle Bouie drily noted O’Reilly’s ignorance, pointing out that “Jay-Z is a multimedia mogul with a gift for business and the credibility of the art world. Kanye West is a hyper-talented producer and visual artist who has refined and redefined the sound of pop music several times over. And in their relentless drive for accomplishment and success, they embody the American dream.

“To Bill O’Reilly, however,” he continued, “they’re just ‘gangster rappers’ who need to be put in their place.”

Ryan, who’s tried mightily to erase the public’s memory of his spectacular failure on the 2012 GOP presidential ticket by talking about the country’s crisis of poverty, claimed it was largely due to a “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and culture of work. So, there’s a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.”